Tottington Medical Practice ordered to improve after CQC inspection

Tottington Medical Practice on Market Street was given an overall rating of "requires improvement" after a visit by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Inspectors said there was a "lack of oversight in the management of some patients being prescribed high-risk medicines" and patients could not easily access services via telephone.

The safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and leadership was ranked as "requires improvement" while the category of whether the provider is caring scored "good".

The inspection report about the practice, which is run by Tower Family Healthcare, said: “Staff had received appropriate training and there were effective health and safety risk assessments.

“Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.

“However, we identified some areas that required improvement such as effective medicine review and monitoring of patients with long-term conditions and those on high-risk medicines."

However, the report, which was published in November 30, praised staff for dealing with patients “with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care”.

But the CQC added that patients could not consistently access the provider via telephone in a timely way, which was reflected in the latest results of the National Patient Survey.

The report said: “We found a breach of regulations.

“The provider must establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

“We also found that the provider should improve the management of safety alerts to ensure patient safety and improve the way clinical searches are completed to ensure potential risks to patient care are identified and managed."

The report has urged the practice to continue monitoring and improving cervical screening rates and, continue to seek and act on feedback and to improve patient experiences.

But it also pointed out that the surgery achieved higher than the international target in childhood vaccinations for children age one and met minimum national targets across the remaining childhood vaccinations.

The report added: “During the inspection process, the practice highlighted efforts they are making to improve outcomes for their patient population.

“The effect of these efforts is not yet reflected in verified outcomes data.

“However, the provider was continuing to take steps to improve access, by the use of a capacity tracker.

“We saw that the practice was monitoring closely telephone performance data and had worked to recruit more GPs and non-clinical support staff.

“As such, the ratings for this inspection have not been impacted.

“However, we continue to monitor the data and where we see potential changes, we will follow these up with the practice."

In response, Dr Victoria Moyle, GP and chair at Tower Family Healthcare said: “Tower Family Healthcare welcomed the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in August 2023 for a routine inspection. 

“Many areas of good practice were highlighted by the inspection team and are referenced in the report, this includes the delivery of caring services for our patients.  We appreciate that there is always room for improvement and some areas for development were also highlighted that we have already started to address.

“Disappointingly, the CQC has advised that our overall rating will be Requires Improvement.

“We strongly believe that this rating does not fairly reflect or represent the services we provide to our patient community and we are exploring how this outcome could be challenged.

“Our team is committed to providing the best possible high quality care and we would like to thank our patients for their ongoing kindness and support.”